The mobile telephone industry, commonly referred to as the cellular or cell phone industry, is committed to providing continuously improved service to its customers. To that end, it seeks to reduce the occurrence of common customer irritants such as dropped calls and blocked call attempts.
At the most basic level, dropped calls and blocked calls are exactly what their names imply. Dropped calls occur after a connection is made between two or more phones and the connection is subsequently lost. This loss or drop in the connection can occur for a number of reasons, such as an inability of the cellular system to handle a hand-off between two cell sites, movement of one of the phones into an area of low signal coverage, obstructions such as buildings, equipment or software problems at a base station, or even weather related events such as thunderstorms.
Blocked calls are calls that are prevented from connecting in the first instance. Often a customer may hear a message to the effect that all circuits are busy. Blocked calls typically occur because the number of attempted calls overwhelms the available system resources. The percentage of blocked call attempts increases where there are periodic large gatherings of people, for example, at large sporting events such as professional football games, conventions, or the like. Certain holidays typically see an increase in the number of call attempts and consequently an increase in the blocked call rate. Additionally, disasters can increase the number of call attempts as people seek information on the events of the disaster and loved ones who may be caught up in those events. This increase in the number of call attempts in turn leads to an increase in the rate of blocked calls.
While blocked and dropped calls are often the most noticeable occurrences affecting customer service, there are other well-known factors that also do so. Among them are sound quality and line static. Telecommunication service providers are thus faced with large amounts of data indicative of good or bad customer service that can vary dramatically over time—hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly—as well as across service areas. This data must be properly analyzed as a whole to determine where available funds for service improvements should be directed. In addition, it is important to be able to analyze the available information to determine whether service level fluctuations result from intermittent occurrences, such as a convention, or are indicative of longer term deficiencies in the system toward which funds should be directed to attempt to remedy those deficiencies.
What remains when presented with the available data, is to analyze it properly to determine where within a telecommunications system the available funds should be directed to improve service.